Molly Galbraith - This Is My Body

[Chomper]

https://www.facebook.com/GirlsGoneSt...07241062686530

[Suzieq430]

Awesome article!

[cherimac]

I love this!

[hch]

I found this thread thanks to an earlier thread, First Bikini Picture Goes Viral. While searching for the article linked in the original post of that thread, I found an article related to the original post of this thread: Woman hits back at bikini body New Year's resolutions with 'inspiring' Facebook post. I didn't post my intended new thread at the time, though, because I was busier. Today, I did a search before I finally started that new thread and found this existing one.

This content is also at Girls Gone Strong, which I've never read regularly.

This Is My Body

This is my body.
This not a before picture.
This is not an after picture.
This just happens to be what my body looks like on a random Tuesday in December of 2015 — it’s a LIFE picture.

Chomper, thanks for the link!

[hch]

I noticed two parts especially. The first:

This is a body that has been called:
too fat
too thin
too masculine
too strong
too weak
too big
too skinny

…all within the same week.

I can produce a sort of "heh" because of all the apparent contradictions, but it'll probably hurt to hear at least seven negative comments in a week (I say "at least" because multiple people might've had the same "insight" to offer).

The contradictions remind me of a longtime contention of mine: such thoughts about bodies say more about our thoughts than they actually say about people's bodies. As Anaïs Nin's personal trainer might have said, "We don't see bodies as they are, we see them as we are."

The hurt reminds me that although I don't have the context for these comments--some of them may have been solicited--I'm now thinking about how much unsolicited commentary we may offer about people's bodies. Our comments say a bit about what's socially acceptable: which comments do we offer (sometimes eagerly)?

[hch]

The other:

This body has been publicly evaluated, judged, and criticized, and those judgments have been used to determine my level of skill as a coach and a trainer, and my worth as a person, both positively and negatively.

I've always been grateful for VF's guideline discouraging criticism of the physiques of video instructors and cast members.

"Though VFers discuss every aspect of their videos and video instructors, we ask that posters stay away from criticism of a particular instructor's (or cast member's) physique or other qualities that have no bearing on the quality of the workout. Everyone has their own definition of physical beauty, and fit women and men come in all shapes and sizes. Such criticism undermines the inclusiveness of this Forum."

As I've noticed from the beginning, though, this reasoning does not apply only to instructors and cast members. If I were given only the reasoning and asked to guess the guideline derived from it, I would've supposed that all criticisms were discouraged. After all, even if I'd chosen to criticize the physique of someone who I knew to be unfit, I might've been implicitly criticizing the physique of someone who looked similar but was fit--such as an instructor or cast member. (I've also enjoyed the subversiveness, intended or not, of insisting that an instructor's physique has "no bearing on the quality of the workout.")

Maybe the step of discouraging all critical physique commentary would've been unusually drastic in our society, and it probably still is.

[Chomper]

Originally Posted by hch

I noticed two parts especially. The first:



I can produce a sort of "heh" because of all the apparent contradictions, but it'll probably hurt to hear at least seven negative comments in a week (I say "at least" because multiple people might've had the same "insight" to offer).

The contradictions remind me of a longtime contention of mine: such thoughts about bodies say more about our thoughts than they actually say about people's bodies. As Anaïs Nin's personal trainer might have said, "We don't see bodies as they are, we see them as we are."

The hurt reminds me that although I don't have the context for these comments--some of them may have been solicited--I'm now thinking about how much unsolicited commentary we may offer about people's bodies. Our comments say a bit about what's socially acceptable: which comments do we offer (sometimes eagerly)?

Wow, great Anais Nin quote! What I think about your body definitely says more about me than it does about you. I also think that what I think about my own body changes daily, hourly, and says a great deal about my mental state.

I agree with your whole post. I would like us as a society to follow more of a Miss Manners approach, which is to only address people you actually know very well, and then, to only say complimentary things. In polite society, the bodies of people we don't know are unavailable for comment. But as you point out, that still leaves lots of room for unsolicited comments about people's bodies. "You look great, have you lost weight?" is a familiar one. Some of us would like our bodies to be unavailable for comment, full stop. I read a piece on Girls Gone Strong (I think, I'll try to find it) about how recovering body image and stopping being obsessive about appearance was achieved personally by the author by deciding not to listen to the criticisms OR compliments. I know a lot of people really enjoy compliments, but maybe they could ask for opinions, and the rest of us could be left alone.

[Chomper]

Unfortunately I couldn't find the article, I can't remember who wrote it. Her point was that if she believes the compliments matter, she is more likely to believe the criticisms matter too.

I have to admit that in a world where it is a pipe dream to hope that people will stop saying horribly critical mean things to perfect strangers about their bodies, that it feels kind of precious to ask for loving family and friends to stop saying nice things about each other's bodies. But, it stems from the same principle: that our bodies and their particular aesthetics are not anyone else's business.

[hch]

Originally Posted by Chomper

Wow, great Anais Nin quote!

Your post reminded me to investigate the context of the actual words (a VFer has quoted them as a signature), as I'd been intending to do for some time. The context is interesting in somewhat of an off-topic way; if I find anything interesting that's particularly on-topic, I'll mention it, and I do have one comparison to make here.

I read that one of Nin's examples of this idea (which she apparently attributed to the Talmud) was two people's contrasting pictures of the same scene. Then I thought of those seven "too" remarks about Molly Galbraith's body, which include maybe three sets of contradictory comments.

Originally Posted by Chomper

What I think about your body definitely says more about me than it does about you. I also think that what I think about my own body changes daily, hourly, and says a great deal about my mental state.

I agree. I don't remember exactly how I thought about the comparisons years ago, but I've thought about how we may treat these things differently:

My thoughts about my own body
My thoughts about others' bodies
Others' thoughts about my body
Others' thoughts about their own bodies
Others' thoughts about the bodies of still others

[hch]

Originally Posted by Chomper

I read a piece on Girls Gone Strong (I think, I'll try to find it) about how recovering body image and stopping being obsessive about appearance was achieved personally by the author by deciding not to listen to the criticisms OR compliments. I know a lot of people really enjoy compliments, but maybe they could ask for opinions, and the rest of us could be left alone.

Originally Posted by Chomper

Unfortunately I couldn't find the article, I can't remember who wrote it. Her point was that if she believes the compliments matter, she is more likely to believe the criticisms matter too.

I've read similar things on other sites, but maybe this is what you read on Girls Gone Strong. (I didn't have success by searching with "compliments" but found this page by searching with "comments.")

How To Not Care What Other People Think Of You

4. I don’t take the positive stuff personally either.

This has been the hardest idea for me to grasp, but it has really made all the difference. I first read of this concept in The Four Agreements. I remember loving the part where I wasn’t supposed to take other’s harsh words personally. I could get on board with that! But the kind ones? Did I not deserve those?

The problem is, we either agree that other’s words define us or we don’t. I also get lots of positive, uplifting comments on a daily basis. If I attached myself and my identity to them it would be an agreement that these comments define me. That would be wonderful if I was riding a wave of “You are so inspiring,” but detrimental when the next, “You are hideous and shouldn’t speak” wave comes crashing in.

I don’t attach to either. I define myself, I deal with my own stuff, and I don’t determine my worth or confidence based on others’ words.

Notice that, at least in my reading, the positive comments in question aren't necessarily about how we look.

I agree with this idea, at least in part. (I'd avoid even "defining myself" in a manner that mimics the idea of other people "defining me," such that It's Not OK if others insult my physique but It's OK if I do the same thing. One primary objection comes from a realization about going the other way. I can't think of how I would define myself as an aesthetically imperfect person without also doing the same to others who resemble me--even if I have no intention of insulting others, even if I intend to avoid insulting others.)

There I do remember some of my thinking process in coming to this agreement with her. (I don't know if I'd ever heard about The Four Agreements.) I did long ago realize that some "compliments" are backhanded, even if they aren't intended to be. Others cast certain shadows, even if they aren't intended to do so. For example, other people elsewhere have mentioned comments like "wow, you look great [now]" from a familiar person--if the implication is that you didn't "look great" before. In my thinking, any line between "negative stuff" in general and "positive stuff" in general isn't very distinct.

Originally Posted by Chomper

I have to admit that in a world where it is a pipe dream to hope that people will stop saying horribly critical mean things to perfect strangers about their bodies, that it feels kind of precious to ask for loving family and friends to stop saying nice things about each other's bodies. But, it stems from the same principle: that our bodies and their particular aesthetics are not anyone else's business.

So it is that I don't consider the request precious. The request may be badly made, and I'd probably try to be subtle and sensitive in the effort if such people were frequently making any sorts of comments about my body--but I'd want to try some gentle persuasion if they did.